


I Don't Need a Knight in Shining Armor (I need you)

by Avengerz



Series: Jungle Cats [1]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Black Panther (Comics), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Fem!Tony, Fluff, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Other, Sexism, Unwanted Advances, Were-Creatures, in the sense that the author got way inside Toni's head by accident, shifter!Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 03:57:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7152086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avengerz/pseuds/Avengerz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toni Stark has clawed her way to the top, a woman in a man's world. She's brash and loud and takes what she wants and no one knows that every month she spends a night as a panther.</p><p>Then the Prince of Wakanda comes along and Toni doesn't need saving, thank you very much, but she'd still be pretty happy if he stuck around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Need a Knight in Shining Armor (I need you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Megeara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megeara/gifts).



> Written for a prompt on tumblr: "Female!Toni is secretly a werepanther, which is an absolute rarity, since her species was/is hhhunted. She could control her instincts, until the day she met T'Challa - around him she can't seem to supress the urge to purr and not-so-accidentally bump her side against him.
> 
> Didn't follow the prompt exactly - werepanthers are seen as fantasy, and the public doesn't know that they exist, let alone that Toni is one.
> 
> I'm really fucking with the timelines but I imagine this in a weird mostly-canon AU where it takes several months for Toni to decide to become Iron Man after coming back from Afghanistan. This occurs before her debut as a superhero, but after Obadiah Stane's arrest by SHIELD.

Toni’s skin is stretched over her aching bones, restlessness in her every sharp motion as she strides across the ballroom floor. People step out of her way, something deep and primal in them recognizing the beast that paces in her diminutive form. She ignores the looks because she knows that they don’t know why they’re looking. The men leer and the women coo about her shoes but she has earned respect in this world of honeyed lies and golden betrayal. They don’t dare disturb her, not when she’s like this, near-feral the night before a full moon.

The glass of scotch is waiting for Toni when she reaches the bar and she knocks back three fingers like the man Howard had tried to train into her. He taught her how to be brash, how to take what she wanted in a world that was unforgiving and cruel to the weak. He taught her to hide her weaknesses, her fears and the monster beneath her skin. He taught her to drink and to never trust a man that smiled with his mouth and not his eyes.

Toni took his lessons and made them a part of herself, part of the woman she forged from bitter defeat and second chances.

She tosses her hair over her shoulder and motions to the bartender for another drink.

“Why, if it isn’t the belle of the ball?” The voice comes from behind her, a thing of honeyed poison. Toni sucks in a breath and squeezes her eyes shut. Not this. Not now. Not now, when her skin itches and her fingers ache and she buzzes within the contains of soft human flesh.

_Don’t you ever show a hint of weakness, girl, or they’ll pounce._

Toni turns, teeth bared in the facsimile of a smile. “Hammer! How awful to see you!”

The asshole just laughs and Toni hates him, hates his slicked-back hair and his obnoxious laugh and the way he thinks he has a claim on her, on her time and her attention.

“Oh, Toni, Toni, Toni. Always the joker, huh, sweetheart?” He chuckles and puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Not your sweetheart,” she gets out through gritted teeth and tries to step back. Hammer holds tight, and his thumb slips under the strap of her dress.

“Now, now, I’m only trying to hold a conversation!” Hammer pivots around her so that Toni’s backed up against the bar and he stands between her and the rest of the glittering, uncaring room. “No need to be so aggressive. Is it that time of the month?” He laughs at his own joke, and Toni wants to claw his face off.

“As a matter of fact, it is.” Just not the ‘time of the month’ he’s thinking of. She smiles at him, feral with lips stained in blood, and his smile falters. Her sense of smell is always enhanced in the days leading up to a change, and even under the cloying scent of his pretentiously expensive cologne, she detects the bitter tang of fear. Toni pushes his hand off of her. “It’s been as lovely to talk to you as ever, Justin. Hope I don’t see you around.”

She slides away from the bar, grabbing someone else’s glass of amber-colored relief as she goes. But Hammer’s always thought more with his dick than his brain, and he catches her wrist before she can take more than a step away.

“Toni, sweetheart, don’t be like that!” He has the gall to sound offended. Toni whirls on him, her dress blowing in the breeze of her movement, and opens her mouth, fully prepared to rip this pathetic excuse of a man apart.

She doesn’t get the chance.

“Excuse me, _inzwakazi_ , is this man bothering you?”

They both freeze. Toni slowly turns to find an absolutely gorgeous man standing behind her, wearing an expression of polite concern. She scowls.

“Yes,” she says, just as Hammer says, “no.” Toni turns his glare on him and yanks her hand out of his grasp before turning back to the newcomer. “But I don’t need your help, Prince Charming, thanks.”

He laughs, rich and golden. The creature inside her stops its frantic pacing around her rib cage at the sound.

“I didn’t think you did, _inzwakazi_. But he,” the man nods toward Hammer, who has stalked off towards a group of simpering society girls, “did not seem the type to respect a woman’s wishes, fool that he is. I thought I might hasten his departure by interfering.”

Toni harrumphs, but the traitorous beast in her barely suppresses a purr of pleasure. Toni doesn’t need a knight in shining armor, but she can’t deny that it’s nice to be protected, once in awhile.

“I’m sorry, I did not introduce myself,” the man says abruptly, and he stretches out a hand. “I am Prince T’Challa of Wakanda.”

Royalty doesn’t phase her, hasn’t since Toni had a playdate with Prince Charles when she was five. “Toni Stark.” She shakes his hand, _like a man_ , and smiles. “Pleasure to meet you.”

* * *

Toni hates these things, galas and parties and testaments to the ego of Upper Society, but they’re a necessity, or so Pepper tells her. She hates the fake laughter and the ego-stroking and the scent of cigar smoke that clings to the old men that ogle her ass. She hates it on these days especially, when the beast in her roars at the indignity of pandering to humans.

But tonight T’Challa walks beside her, tells her of the fierce female warriors of his country and the trade negotiations that have brought him to America. She talks about her latest plans for SI’s clean energy research and the difficulties of being a woman in a man’s world. Conversation flows free and easy, and they leave the ballroom for one of the balconies. He speaks of his deep love for his family and his secret fear that he won’t ever measure up to his father when it is time to step up to the throne. She watches the stars whirling above them and whispers of how she was never good enough for Howard, of Obadiah’s betrayal.

He takes her hand, and the beast in her settles.

* * *

They climb into the limo together, and Happy does a good job at hiding his surprise when their clothes stay on the entire way back to the tower. Toni leans against him and T’Challa wraps an arm around her shoulders. He whispers the beauty of his homeland’s jungles into her hair and she aches for it.

Toni leads him to the penthouse and the elevator ride is spent in a companionable silence she usually only finds with the bots, or sometimes Rhodey. T’Challa doesn’t gawk at the luxury of it all like some of her conquests, doesn’t even blink, and it registers with Toni that he is richer than she will ever be. It’s a relief, in a way. She knows he’s not after her for her money.

She stops in the middle of the living room, heels abandoned and hair falling out of the messy bun she’d pulled it into in the limo, and looks at T’Challa. She’s never done this with someone she actually cares about, someone who suggests improvements to her inventions and laughs at her dry quips. Toni doesn’t want to fuck up whatever this fragile thing is.

T’Challa steps toward her and takes her hand in his. He kisses it, dry and soft, and looks up at her with dark eyes. “Goodnight, _inzwakazi_.” He steps back, and Toni realizes he is going to leave without even kissing her properly. She doesn’t want to say goodbye, can’t.

“No, wait,” she blurts out, loud in the silence of the apartment lit only by the city lights through the windows. T’Challa looks back, and she hesitates. “Stay?” It comes out like a question. She lifts her chin, meets his gaze evenly. “Just for the night?”

T’Challa smiles. “Whatever you wish, _sithandwa sam_.”

* * *

They don’t have sex. Toni changes into pyjamas thick enough to cover the scars in the en suite bathroom and T’Challa strips to boxers and a cotton undershirt. They curl up on Toni’s gigantic bed and JARVIS plays Tarzan because T’Challa’s never seen it.

Toni laughs at his grumbling at the inaccuracies because she can tell how fascinated he is with the story, and she presses her face into his shoulder and breathes happiness against his collarbone.

* * *

He’s supposed to leave in the morning, Toni thinks. Is there a protocol for one-night stands if all they do is cuddle? T’Challa doesn’t leave, though. Instead, he steals a pair of sweatpants left by one of her lovers and clatters about in the kitchen while she showers.

Toni closes her eyes in the shower and spends the entire three minutes she can stand in the warm spray remembering his scent.

T’Challa greets her with pancakes and a kiss on the cheek when she emerges in a robe carefully tightened over all of her broken places. They eat at the kitchen counter and he tells her his impressions of the assholes they met at the party and she laughs and for the first time in years isn’t tempted to spike her coffee with alcohol.

* * *

Toni takes him into her workshop (not one of the R&D floors, her personal ‘shop the one no one comes in) and he crouches down to greet the bots and Toni’s breath catches in her throat.

“What are their names?” T’Challa asks her with a smile. He runs a gentle hand down Dummy’s strut and the robot preens.

“Dummy and Butterfingers,” she says, hoarse.

T’Challa turns that blinding smile on the ‘bots. “Hello, Dummy and Butterfingers.”

Toni might be in trouble.

* * *

The thing is, Toni actually forgets. The beast is usually restless on these days, pacing through her veins and scratching at the prison of her ribcage. She is usually intimately aware of the progression of the moon on the other side of the world, slowly inching towards the change.

But it is silent in her now, curled up contentedly near the beat of her heart and purring in time. She forgets to be wary, forgets that T’Challa is not supposed to be here, until they’re elbow deep into Toni’s latest invention, a helper bot for victims of PTSD, and T’Challa is telling her about the pride Wakanda takes in both their tradition and their technology, and JARVIS clears his throat in that unnecessary way of polite programming. “Ma’am, if I may,” he flashes the time on a nearby hologram: 7:56, half an hour til sundown, “it may be time for Prince T’Challa to take his leave.”

T’Challa looks at her but doesn’t question it. He stands and presses a kiss to her forehead and she watches, mute, as he bids farewell to the bots and strides towards the door.

“Wait,” she says, and the word catches in her throat, comes out as an inarticulate sound. She clears her throat and tries again. “Wait, T’Challa.”

He stops in the doorway. There’s something like cautious hope in his eyes, but he stays silent, and Toni loves him a little bit for that. “There’s-” she sighs heavily and collapses into the rolling desk chair she stole from Pepper’s office. “There’s something you should know.”

T’Challa crosses the room in that silent way he has and pulls up a stool to sit across from her. He still says nothing, and that more than anything prompts Toni to speak - she can’t stand a room like this, one tense with its own anticipation.

“Have you ever heard of werewolves?”

T’Challa blinks, obviously taken aback. He breaks his silence, cutting right to the point. “Are you saying you are a werewolf, _sithandwa_?” Amazingly, he doesn’t sound incredulous, just curious.

“No.” Toni shakes her head sharpy, sending her hair flicking over the lines of her neck. “I mean,  not really.” T’Challa raises an eyebrow, silently questioning. Toni sighs again. “I’m a, well, I suppose the best word for it would be ‘werepanther.’ Every month, on the full moon, I turn into a panther.” She wants to look away, avoid the expressions that she knows will play across T’Challa’s dark features - amusement, confusion, pity - but Howard Stark raised no coward. Toni lifts her chin and meets his gaze.

T’Challa looks awed. “Toni,” he whispers, and in a movement so graceful Toni hardly recognizes what’s happening, the prince of Wakanda slips to his knees in front of her. “Toni, my people worship Bast, the Panther God. He protects us against disease and evil spirits, and he grants one of our warriors the mantle of the Black Panther, to protect us all.” He takes one of her hands like it’s something precious and presses a kiss to her opened palm. “You are one of his chosen.”

Toni splutters, but she doesn’t pull her hand back. “I’m not- I’m not some kind of deity or something! I’m a freak of evolution, a mistake of genetics. I’m not a goddess!”

T’Challa looks up at her, and his gaze feels like the sun on her skin. “I am not so sure.”

* * *

Toni lets him stay. She checks to make sure all of her usually security measures are in place and T’Challa watches her from the couch in the penthouse. “You might not be safe,” she warns for the sixth or seventh time, and he nods without any hint of impatience.

“I can protect myself, Toni, you need not fear.”

“I’ve attacked people while in this form,” she persists, although really it was only Howard and she likes to think she was under duress.

“I am a warrior.” T’Challa catches her hand as Toni paces by him and presses a kiss to it before pulling her down to the couch next to him. “I do not doubt your ability in either forms, _qabane iam_ , but you must trust me in this.”

Toni breathes in his rich scent - sandalwood, cinnamon, rich earth and something deeper that she can’t identify - and nods.

They sit and watch the sun dip below the buildings until Toni feels the panther pushing against her skin, anxious for escape. “You might want to leave the room,” she tells T’Challa as she steps out of her jeans. “Rhodey assures me that this next bit is pretty disgusting to watch.” T’Challa hesitates, and she thinks he might refuse, but then his eyes lock onto where she is playing nervously with the hem of her shirt, and he nods.

“I will return when you have changed.” Toni wants to protest, wants to convince him that he shouldn’t do this, he shouldn’t sacrifice his time and his attention and his safety on a monster like her, but the words are solid, irrefutable, and she only nods.

The door to one of the guest bedrooms clicks shut behind him.

Toni strips naked in a room lit only by the rising moon and lets the change embrace her.

* * *

She never remembers the changes, not really. All that returns to her the next morning are glimpses of sounds, of sensations, of animal emotions.

Toni lies on something soft and warm and lets herself remember.

_\- deep words in a language she can’t understand and a hand on her head, the scent of jungle clinging to a man with a golden smile, fingers on her back that she arches into with a content purr, curling up with a steady heartbeat beneath her ears -_

She opens her eyes, and isn’t surprised to see T’Challa smiling down at her, his fingers still in her hair. “Good morning, _ikatana_.”

Toni smiles, and the panther purrs. “Good morning.”

**Author's Note:**

> The italicized words are Xhosa, which MCU is using as the language of Wakanda.
> 
> inzwakazi: beautiful woman  
> sithandwa sam: my love  
> sithandwa: darling  
> qabane iam: lover  
> katana: kitten
> 
> Come say hi at my [tumblr](anthonyfuckingstark.tumblr.com) or prompt more Iron Panther at [ImagineIronPanther!](imagineironpanther.tumblr.com)
> 
> If you liked this, I'd **love** to hear about it in a comment!


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